I’ve Got the San Francisco Blues

25 Sep

I have been spending some time in the East Bay recently, and spending time there, soaking up the sun, walking among families along tranquil, tree-lined sidewalks, I have begun to undertand the area’s siren song for fed-up San Franciscans. What do San Franciscans have to be fed up about? Plenty.

We are tired of the last San Franciscans being evicted from their homes for the building of condominiums. This is happening within blocks of where I live. And in the Lower Haight, studio apartments are being rented for $4,000. A commenter on SFist notes: They say that you shouldn’t spend more than 25% of your income on rent. At 4000K a month’s rent is going to cost you $48000 a year. That means you need to earn 192K a year to live within your means. Of course what this commenter misses is that we San Franciscans don’t spend a quarter of our income on rent. For me it’s more like 51%/ Just over half of my monthly paycheck goes towards rent so that I can live in this city. And for what?

To watch as the mom and pop restaurants get replaced by crudo small plate gluten-free gastropubs, so that every last bar with character can be turned into a cocktail bar that serves libations in mason jars, where you can’t get a drink for under $12. Rather than be a city of young kids, recent college grads, families, and senior citizens, we are just a city of recent college grads. Mostly white, some Asian, but overall not too diverse. In a city known for being freewheeling and creative, I find myself more and more preoccupied with keeping up with the Joneses. This city’s vibrant residents have always made it unique, and yet I see a lot more sameness. My favorite bar, Bigfoot Lodge, once a dimly lit dive with kitschy decor and friendly if a bit rough around the edges bartenders, is being revamped. And I just read that Red Devil Lounge, just a stone’s throw away, is being turned into, you guessed it, a craft cocktial bar. Everything in this city now caters to the super rich, starting with housing.

And of course, a toast of champagne to Larry Ellison and his Oracle Team USA, who have won the America’s Cup. Huzzah!

11 Preguntas de CristinaFra

16 Sep

Por fin he leído el blog de CristinaFra, que se llama simplemente Espacio de Cristina. He encontrado esta lista, y pensé que sería divertido contestarlas:

1. ¿Que es lo que te inspiro a hacer un blog? Siempre leo la escritura de los demás, y pensé que por fin yo añadiría algo a la conversación. Además, fue un requisitio de un curso de marketing.

2. ¿Qué es lo que te inspira? El intercambio de indeas, y las conexiones entre personas en lugares diversos del mundo facilitadas por el internet.

3. ¿Mar o montaña? Mar pacífico.

4. ¿Vida de ciudad o espacios abiertos? Ciudad

5. ¿Eres de día o de noche? Antes era de noche, ahora soy muy de día

6. ¿Comida preferida? Carbohídratos- pasta, pan, arroz, pasteles.

7. ¿De dulce o salado? Los dos, depende de mi humor. Pero a menudo es dulce.

8. ¿Sensible a….? La falta de respeto de desconocidos en el bus.

9. ¿Una película que te impacto? Imitation of Life. Trailer aquí. Imposible verla y no dejar caer una lágrima (o muchas).

10. ¿Un libro que destacarías? Últimamente ha sido Wild de Cheryl Strayed.

11. ¿Vaso lleno o vacío? Lleno

Who Gets to be an American?

16 Sep
Miss America

Miss America

Today is sandwiched between Sunday September 15th, when Nina Davaluri was crowned Miss America, and Tuesday September 17th, when PBS airs its three part series, “Latino Americans”. So the PBS special will illustrate the long-standing, vital contributions of Latinos in the United States, but on Sunday, a handful of pig-headed racists unleashed their vitriol on Twitter and voiced their displeasure at Miss America being non-white. These knuckle-draggers clearly equate American-ness with whiteness. The PBS series will show us Latinos the history of our involvement in the Unites States and its evolution, but perhaps this is a documentary that should be viewed by all Americans, latino and non-Latino. There are many people out there who still hold a very narrow view of who is and isn’t American.

I am always surprised at the way that certain white folks view America- they see it as the land where they can trace the history of their family for generations. The sense of ownership in the land gives them a view of America as unchanging, a palce where one can draw a straight line from white colonist to white suburban homeowner. Yet for those of us who see America through the eyes of relative newcomers- my Mom came as a kid- we see this country as a place of opportunity, where our families got to start over. We don’t freak out at the prospect of a multiracial America, because we are multiracial America. This country is great precisely because it is based on an idea- that you can pursue happiness and remake yourself. It is a dream open to all, from the descendents of slaves to Cuban emigrés to the parents of beautiful Nina Davaluri.

This country is so great that Indians have noted that a dark-skinned beauty such as Davaluri would never be given this platform on the Indian subcontinent. In Huffington Post, Riddhi Shah writes, “the world’s most influential country is showing my people that a deep velvet brown complexion is nothing to be ashamed of.” So yes, a few racists have found a very loud mouthpiece, but at the end of the day, Nina Davaluri’s selection as Miss America is something to be proud of.  America is made up of much more than a few blowhards with Twitter accounts.

A Cranky Moment with Dwayne Kennedy

15 Sep

Creating a Community of Single Women

11 Sep
Don't worry, you won't end up like them

Don’t worry, you won’t end up like them

The purpose of this blog post is to praise Mandy Hale and her efforts as The Single Woman. Much has been written elsewhere about the creation of communities online, how the anonymity and immediacy of the online space fosters community in a way that is impossible otherwise. Well, Mandy Hale has created a community of over 500,000 Twitter followers who read her daily affirmations for single women. Although the term single woman could technically apply to any unmarried woman of any age, the tweets have particular resonance to single women of, say, a certain age. Single women past their mid-twenties who face a barrage of “Why haven’t you settled down yet?” and “Why are you so darn picky?” and “Don’t you want to have kids”? find particular resonance in the words that Mandy writes that both commiserate with and cajole the reader to strive for more and to aim higher. It’s a reminder that even when it seems that we are the last single women on Earth (and trust me, I often feel like the last single woman I know), we are not. There are others out there living their lives and facing the same joys and doubts that we 30 something single women face. For me, reading Mandy’s tweets and the many comments they receive makes me feel like I’m part of a community of women who get me.

One minor note of discord: Mandy is very religious and peppers her tweets and new book with quotes from the Bible and prayers for single women. I appreciate that her religious belief is very important to her, but I wish she knew that she had followers who are not religious (I’m sure I’m not the only one). I also cringed when I heard that she would be appearing on The 700 Club, hosted by Pat Robertson, who stated that 9/11 happened because we Americans brought it on ourselves because of “the pagans, the abortions, the feminists and the gays and lesbians”. I shudder to think that someone I otherwise admire a great deal would appear alongside this hateful man.

The Apple Hype Machine!

10 Sep
Apple Hype

Apple Hype

Well, in case you missed it, Apple announced a new model of the iPhone today. There will be a cheap version and a not so cheap version. One will be made of plastic and the other will be made of gold, if you so desire. But what struck me about today’s announcement is the inordinate amount of hype that went into it. A co-worker who is ordinarily far from a techie was breathlessly reading out updates as they came in on Twitter. Apple is one of those few brands that inspires such devotion among its customers. I know that I have single-handedly helped keep them in business with my MacBook, iPad 2 and iPhone 4S, and my loyalty comes from knowing the pain and heartache of having dealt with a PC, and all of its attendant security updates and viruses. Apple is smooth, it’s simple, it’s pretty, and always has been. But will it continue to be in the future?

I worry that without the visionary leadership of Steve Jobs, Apple is sacrificing innovation for incremental boosts in stock prices and nearly non-existent improvements in product. The iPhone 4S has a killer app: Siri, voice activated help for virtually any situation. No one else has a Siri-like app on the market. But ever since Siri, we’ve gotten the iPhone 5, which offers nothing more than a thinner model and a longer screen, and the new 5C and 5S, which offer affordability and increased battery power. Nevertheless, if reports of fingerprint recognition are to be believed, Apple has made a huge step forward in security (keep your hands off my phone, iPhone thieves!). But there are no great leaps forward, no vision. I wonder if Apple is keeping up with the rumors of Amazon, the ultimate disrupter, producing a contract-free phone, and if so, if they are ready to not just make modest adjustments year in and year out, but to lead the pack as before. In any case, they’ll always have the fanboys and the hype machine at their disposal.

Emily Dickinson: Hope

9 Sep

Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops-at all.
And sweetest–in the Gale–is heard,
And sore must be the storm,
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest Sea.
Yet, never, in Extremity
It asked a crumb–of me.

The First Writer Who Moved Me

8 Sep
Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

Linda Gregerson at the Poetry Society recently wrote about her literarty first love, John Donne. She claims to have encountered Donne at age sixteen, a rather young age to come upon the poet, as I found him difficult when I read him at age twenty in college; specifically, Reading the Traditional British Canon Part I. I certainly appreciate Donne and has vivid imagery. Gregerson’s post made me wonder, who would I consider a literary first love?

The one name that comes to mind is Emily Dickinson. I was given a pocket sized edition of her best poems, I believe as a gift from an aunt who fed my reading habit early on. Perhaps the gift was a throwaway, as it was so tiny- you could only hold it with two fingers. And yet I came to love the immediacy of Dickinson’s language. All of those dashes! The beats were quick- the language syncopated, like music. And the content- the content! Dickinson’s romantic longings echoed my own adolescent yearnings and drama. She wanted so badly to experience the world around her, and it resonated with my thirteen year old self. And yet what got me through difficult adolesclent years was the idea of hope as a bird that flaps its wings uncontrollably within ones’ chest. Hope has never been captured better.

Over the years, Dickinson’s poetry has had less of an impact on me, and yet she was the first poet to truly make an impact on me.

Video

R.E.M. “It’s the end of the world”

3 Sep

Michael Stipe makes sense of the crazy modern age- twenty years ago.

It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)

3 Sep

Do you ever find that you feel a tad guilty when the headlines scream bloody murder and yet life at a microcosmic level seems to be going great? I often find this is the case. Our country is on the brink of war as we contemplate a strike against Syria, Egypt is on the verge of civil war, Russia is persecuting gay people, the economy is still recovering (although let’s get real, here in California and San Francisco things are pretty sweet), global warming is accelerating. And yet.

Life goes on. We should work like hell to make sure that, bit by bit, things are improved. Maybe we don’t solve the Syria crisis, but we donate to the Red Cross. We can’t stop environmental degradation single-handedly, but we can reuse canvas bags and drive less. Sometimes on a personal level life is on the up and up- the family is great, the friends are great, your lungs fill with sweet September air and all is right with the world. I walk home and look out to stunning views of the San Francisco Bay and feel very fortunate and blessed. There is suffering, all around us and at all times, but it is good to embrace life and be happy in the midst of the tumult of the world. So let’s not feel bad for feeling fine. Life continues.

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